Making Amends
by Tynesider
Summary: Elora is feeling guilty for interrupting an ill Spyro's rest, and is keen to make it up to him. Keener than she realises. OneShot.


"Spyro, are you home?"

The faun banged on the door again, her knuckles beginning to throb. In the sky above her dark clouds consumed the last pieces of blue sky, and with their aerial dominance assured a few drops of rain fell, one of which landed in her auburn hair. "Oh, give me strength!" she whined, feeling the cold spike in her crown. "Spyro!" she added, louder and angrier, "Will you open up? It's starting to rain and I left my coat at home!" She thumped the door again, then the Heavens opened. As she felt soaked strands of hair cling to her face she hit the door harder.

"Spyro!" she screamed, "If you don't open up right now I'm going to..."

She stopped mid-rant as the door swung open, a chorus of creaks accompanying the sudden motion, and as she looked to the floor she instantly regretted raising her voice. Standing in the doorway was Spyro, but not as she knew him. The Spyro she knew didn't have a reddened nose and bloodshot eyes.

"Oh, hey Elora." he said slowly, words slurring into one another, "What're you doing here?"

Elora stood silent, the driving rain now irrelevant. Guilt and embarrassment seized control of her vocal cords, and only after several awkward seconds did she manage to defeat her internal revolution.

"Erm..." she began finally, swaying on her cloven feet, "I came to deliver these to you," she placed the bag in her hand at Spyro's feet, "Just some stuff from Avalar. A late birthday present."

"Oh, that's nice," Spyro said. With slow movements he grabbed the bag in his jaws and pulled it into his home, "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

A thick snuffling sound rose into the air as Spyro breathed, and Elora found herself unable to feign ignorance any longer. "Spyro, are you okay?" she asked, though she knew the answer already.

"Never been better," Spyro replied earnestly.

"Come off it, Spyro. You don't have to be a hero right now."

"I'm fine though."

"No you're not."

"How can you tell?"

"Your nose is red, you look like you're about to fall to sleep and you're speaking like you've had a few bottles of Scorch's finest. You're sick, Spyro, and don't tell me otherwise."

Spyro sniffed again, a symphony of mucus ringing in his nostrils, "It's just a little cold," he reassured, "And my head hurts a little...and I feel a little sluggish..."

"Alright!" Elora interrupted, feeling her guilt growing more powerful. She strode into the wooden lodge and shut the door behind her.

"Elora..." he paused to sniff again, "What are you doing?"

"I'm gonna look after you."

"But there's no need."

"I've seen corpses looking healthier than you, so I think there is a need."

"I can look after myself."

"You can say what you like, I'm not going to back down. Now what sort of soup do you prefer?"

"I don't have any soup in the house."

"I know, that's why I'm going to make you some, and while I do that you're going to climb into bed and get some rest."

"Elora..."

"Don't make me force you!"

"But I don't need..." He was cut off mid-sentence as Elora plucked him from the ground. "Elora, please!" he protested as she carried him through to a bedroom awash with tissues.

"Spyro, can you please do as I say? I want to help you."

"I'm fine!"

His protest once again fell on deaf ears as she pulled back the bedcovers and gently lay him down. "Elora, you don't..."

"Spyro, can you just accept that I'm not going!" she snapped, grinding her teeth in frustration. The purple dragon lay still and silent, then slowly pulled the bedcovers over his body. "Thank you," Elora whispered, "Sorry for raising my voice, it's just I want to help but you keep trying to turn me down."

Spyro remained silent, his only noise being another sniff, but the reluctant look on his face failed to soothe Elora's guilt. She sat down on his bedside and shot him a warm smile, "I do want to help you feel better, y'know."

Spyro continued to say nothing.

"I feel really bad about banging on the door and shouting at you when you're sick."

"It's okay," Spyro whispered.

"It's okay with you but it's not okay with me, so I want to make it up to you," she grabbed the sheets and pulled them up to Spyro's chin, "It's pouring down outside as well, so while I'm stuck here I might as well make myself useful." She slid her hand across the bed so that it touched Spyro's, "You're my friend and I want to help you get better, and you look absolutely shattered. So will you get some sleep, just for me?"

She smiled as warmly as she could, and Spyro smiled back. His grin was weakened by illness and fatigue, but the intent was there. He lay his head onto the pillow, sniffed his nose clear once more, then closed his eyes.

Everything Elora did after that helped her to feel better. She closed the curtains and removed all the used tissues from his room. She gave the house a once over with a duster too, every grime-destroying stroke easing her discomfort. It was only when the cosy little lodge shone with a coat of polish did she finally start on the promised bowl of soup. Starting, however, was an optimistic statement, as finding ingredients that could go into the cooking pot was a challenge in its own right, but spurred by her desire to assist she rooted through the cupboards and, after a hard-fought search, she finally came up trumps with two carrots, an onion and a leek hovering somewhere between edible and decaying. She knew the resultant meal wouldn't be the best thing he'd ever eaten, but it was better than nothing, and better than nothing was better than guilt.

The soup simmered on the stove as Elora finally dried her saturated fur, and when the time came to serve she had turned two towels into wet rags. This was unlike her – she hated wet fur, yet she had spent the last fifteen minutes marching around as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The concern, however, slipped to the back of her mind as she carried the finished soup to the bedroom, but the bowl only made it as far as the hallway, as it was there that the photo frames caught her eye. A series of oaken rectangles lined the hallway shelf, stretching from door to door, but what caught Elora's eye was a flash of auburn. Setting the bowl down on the floor to spare her hands she moved in for a closer look. The flash of auburn was her hair, a fiery contrast to the blue sky of Sunny Beach, and taking up the left side of the image was a grinning Spyro. She smiled appreciatively for a moment, but then her peripheral vision spotted another blotch of auburn. She looked to the picture beside the Sunny beach snap; it was her and Spyro again, this time in Winter Tundra, huddled up to one another as a fierce blizzard blew by. She chuckled at the sight of it. That day was easy to remember – a walking tour of Avalar gone horribly wrong, their arrival time grossly underestimated so instead of avoiding the storm by half an hour they arrived at the peak of it. With the wind battering their faces they'd taken cover in one of the many caves nestled beneath the frozen plateau, and once there Spyro did nothing but apologise. He bemoaned his poor planning and all the small diversions they'd taken on the trip, and while she had told him to forget about it he had been determined to make it up at whatever cost. He lit a fire; made her sit next to it and asked every few minutes if she was comfortable. He stood guard at the entrance of the cave, watching for dangerous creatures at the cost of being back out in the cold, and ignored her pleas for him to join her round the fire. Elora rolled her eyes at his stubbornness, but as she stared at the smiling faces in the frame she felt an admiration for his behaviour. In fact, he had always behaved like that. Day in, day out. True, from time to time he was a tad naïve, but his intentions were always in the right place. He never meant harm to anyone, not least her. No, he had always been a gentleman to her...

She felt a warm drift of air tickling her leg. The soup! Cursing her short attention span she scooped the bowl up and continued on to the bedroom. Spyro was still sleeping as she entered, the only noise the gentle rasping of air on mucus as he breathed. She set the bowl down on the bedside table then sat on the end of his bed again, watching as he slumbered with a small smile playing on her lips. Even when ill and tired he insisted on playing the hero, which wasn't particularly wise but still drew a beleaguered sense of admiration for him. She reached across and stroked his quilted toes. He was nice. Yeah, that was it. He was just plain nice. An extremely likeable little dragon. Who had been exceptionally good to her since that initial meeting when she had redirected him from his vacation. She chuckled at the thought of how agitated he had been to see not sun and sea but a desperate-looking faun and cheetah.

"Sorry about that," she said, turning back to the unconscious Spyro, "Cutting short your vacation, I mean. It was very rude of me." As expected, Spyro didn't respond. That was okay. It made what was coming less awkward for her. "It's been a long time since then, hasn't it?" she added, leaving a pause for an answer that would never arrive, "And I never properly apologised for doing what I did." She rubbed his foot again, "You know, if you were awake you'd be telling me not to worry about it, 'cause that's what you do, but since you're asleep I'm gonna make it up to you and there isn't a lot you can do about it." She stood up and shuffled closer to him, then crouched down and kissed the tip of his reddened snout. "Thank you," she whispered, "And get well soon."

She beat a hasty retreat from the room shortly after to clean up the dirty pots and pans she had left behind, which meant she missed the smile that spread across the purple dragon's face.

* * *

**So, I decided to do myself an art trade with Flowerstar. She asked me for Spyro falling ill and Elora looking after him to reflect a time she fell ill with a bad cold, so that's exactly what I did.**

**Just so you know, please don't PM me with requests for trades or anything. This request for a trade arrived just before I got a 'promotion' (in the loosest sense of the word) at the programme I write for, which means I have less time to myself than I used to.  
**

**Until next time, why not leave a review? :D  
**


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